1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to ink jet printers and consumable components used with them.
2. Related Art
Recently, ink jet printers have become widely used in the graphic arts industry. This has been mainly due to continuing increases in quality and throughput achievable with ink jet printers at a cost which is competitive with more traditional graphic arts production processes.
It can be appreciated that many different parameters affect the print quality achievable in ink jet printing. These parameters include ambient environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity. Also, the type of ink and type of media affect the results of the print process. In currently available ink jet printers, the user must consider these various parameters and adjust printer operation accordingly in order to maximize print quality. Although an experienced user of such printers can produce high quality prints, and maximize print speeds, considerable training and experience is required to optimize print operations.
Some efforts have been made to address this problem. For example, a small amount of intelligence has been built into ink jet printer components, most commonly the ink cartridge itself. In these systems, information such as ink color, remaining ink volume, nozzle information, etc. is provided to the printer from a memory element on the ink cartridge itself.
In some proposed printing systems, selected aspect of a printer's configuration are automatically controlled based on sensed environmental conditions. One such system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,617,516 to Barton. In this patent, some "operational subroutines" such as the frequency of printhead wiping and flushing are varied depending on current temperature and humidity values. U.S. Pat. No. 5,428,379 to Kaneko, et al. describes a system using fuzzy logic to control printer operation in accordance with several sensed parameters.